A Shenzhen Retrospective | Part II: Fusing tech and culture in the city of the future

2026/10/20

Today is my second day here in Shenzhen and I find myself once again having my preconceived notions about the city proven wrong.

As I said in my Part I of my current Shenzhen cities, despite having lived in China for over half a decade, I found myself "buying into the hype" that Shenzhen is a city for business and manufacturing and not much else. As someone who works in neither of those industries, I never felt an urge to visit Shenzhen on my own volition.

However, today I visited two locations that once again dispelled those erroneous notions.

The first place I visited was the North Branch of the Shenzhen Library. Now, true, I expected a major city like Shenzhen to have a public library, but I had no idea as to the vastness of the library but also how the library seamlessly fuses technology and literature into one amazing and convenient experience. With 8 million volumes within its collections, Shenzhen Library's North Branch alone is a world-class center of learning that can easily service the city's 18 million inhabitants.

The front lobby of the Shenzhen Library North Branch in Shenzhen city, south China's Guangdong Province. (People's Daily Online/Andrew Smith)

When I was offered the chance to visit the service desk, I was greeted by an AI assistant who could seamlessly direct me to whatever book or service I needed. Just for fun, I asked her where I could find a copy of "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms." She quickly told me exactly where to find it and within minutes, I had it in my hand without even needed to scour for it among the shelves. I was told by staff that the Shenzhen Library has a state of the art "track retrieval system," which fulfills' readers' requests by retrieving the books from storage and loading them onto a suspension trolley and then sent to a service desk in less than eight minutes.

An AI assistant at the front desk at the Shenzhen Library North Branch helps readers find books with innovative ease in Shenzhen city, south China's Guangdong Province. (People's Daily Online/Andrew Smith)

In less than ten minutes, a classic of Chinese literature was right in my hands thanks to modern technology!

After marveling at the amenities at Shenzhen Library, our team visited the Shenzhen Art Museum's New Venue. The museum was a breathtaking collection of art and history that connected the modern urban to the traditional- one of the current visiting exhibits, a beautiful spread of modern takes on Tibetan Buddhist art- was particularly stunning and demonstrated that any claims of Shenzhen being a "soulless" urban dystopia is simply untrue.

An artist demonstrates painting traditional Tibetan Buddhist artwork at the Shenzhen Art Museum New Venue in Shenzhen city, south China's Guangdong Province. (People's Daily Online/Andrew Smith)

The museum's exhibition on butterflies, moths, and other insects native to Shenzhen was also extremely charming, and showed that the city is still deeply in touch with its natural roots, wishing to preserve and popularize the flora and fauna of its city.

Finally, we ended our tour with a wonderful exhibit of modern paintings inspired by the Mogao cave murals of Dunhuang, northwest China's Gansu Province, demonstrating that Shenzhen is a city connected to the rest of China in multiple cultural and artistic ways.

An exhibit dedicated to art inspired by Gansu Province's Mogao cave murals at the Shenzhen Art Museum New Venue, Shenzhen city, south China's Guangdong Province. (People's Daily Online/Andrew Smith)

Shenzhen might not be the first place one might think of when they think of a "city of culture," but a closer look at the city's libraries, museums, and arts centers show that the city truly has a cosmopolitan sensibility that is worth exploring beyond the skyscrapers, data centers, and microchip factories. As a foreigner living here in China, I highly recommend my fellow Westerners give Shenzhen a chance when it comes to the more aesthetic aspects of life.